Got to Give it Up…

Readers of Genetic Future, Genomics Law Report and Genomes Unzipped are likely well acquainted with questions of returning genetic and genomic results to research participants. Recently, those questions have become more acute as the cost of sequencing continues to nosedive. Whole genomes and whole exomes of potentially identifiable people are suddenly everywhere. Thus, even though you might only be studying the genetic basis of Crohn’s disease or epilepsy, you might find that you have every participant’s and every control’s complete cellular hard drive, i.e., his or her full set of protein coding sequences and all the variation therein, at your disposal. What’s a poor PI to do?